NEW RESOURCES

Scottish Field: Knights Templar Beard Advice Goes Online. “The 12th century advice on why excessive facial hair wasn’t needed is part of 240 documents digitised by the library, thanks to a donation from Alexander Graham, the television producer behind the genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? The manuscripts – which date from the 9th to the 16th centuries – also include ‘stunning illuminations, medieval doodles, [and] zodiac medical material’.”

Pitchfork: The Syrian Cassette Archives Explore a Pivotal Era of Middle Eastern Music. “In February, he launched the website for the Syrian Cassette Archives, a multimedia project that focuses on a vibrant cassette culture that flourished in Syria from the 1970s to the 2000s. Since founding the project in 2018, [Mark] Gergis and a small group of collaborators have spent countless hours digitizing his collection of around 400 tapes. He’s also amassed new acquisitions of tapes and conducted interviews with artists and tape sellers from Syria.”

CBC: N.W.T. museum digitizes hundreds of fine art pieces in new online collection. “The Northwest Territories’ Prince of Wales Heritage Centre is making hundreds of its fine art items searchable online, something museum curatorial assistant Ryan Silke says will bring one of the biggest collections of northern sculptures, paintings, prints and textiles to users without leaving their home.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Roundtable: Possible Google Search Algorithm Update May 1st With Rumbles All Week. “For the past week, I have been seeing a different pattern with a possible Google search ranking algorithm update. The forums and SEO discussion around a possible Google update was brewing a good part of last week but the automated tracking tools, most of them, didn’t really pick up signs of a Google update.”

Good E-Reader: The Amazon Kindle will support EPUB in late 2022. “Amazon has announced that all of the modern Kindle e-readers will support the most popular ebook format in the world, EPUB. The company recently updated their Send to Kindle documentation and stated that it will add support for EPUB later this year. Send to Kindle will suspend the ability to load in MOBI, since it is an older file format and won’t support the newest Kindle features for documents. If you have MOBI books already on your Kindle, they will continue to be accessible. Amazon is also disabling to the ability to send AZW to the Kindle.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Verge: Today I learned about the ‘secret’ Twitter DM inbox — here’s how to see it. “Today I learned about a secret cache of Twitter DMs that’s hidden behind a privacy setting. For some people, this means uncovering a trove of important messages that they’ve missed out on, but if you’re like me, the discovery of a ‘hidden’ inbox wasn’t all that exciting. In either case, it’s still worth checking to see if you might have any messages Twitter blocked you from viewing.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New Frame: South African history, through Rashid Lombard’s lens. “A tragedy for many South African photographers is the disarray and neglect of their archives. This includes apartheid-era photographers who did not have the resources to preserve their collections. And once they are elderly or die, the responsibility falls to their families, who often don’t have the capacity to honour their archives either. Their legacies risk being lost forever. This makes the project that Lombard and his team are starting profoundly important. He has handed the custodianship of his complete archive to the University of the Western Cape (UWC), with the rights remaining with his family. He is also starting the three-year process of digitising his archive, planning to open a photography centre guided by his vision.”

WIRED: How to Officially Submit Your Emoji Idea. “IF YOU’VE EVER had an idea for a new emoji bouncing around in your head, now’s your chance. The official online submission window for 2022 opened in early April and closes at the end of July. Anyone not familiar with the history of the tiny cartoon images should check out our guide to emoji by senior writer Arielle Pardes, who explains the emoji’s background in Japanese culture and how it’s currently indexed by a nonprofit group known as the Unicode Consortium.”

New York Times: He Wrapped Landmarks in Fabric. Years Later, His Art Turned Up in a Dumpster.. “[Francis] Hines earned a pinch of critical acclaim for wrapping this and other New York City structures, including the Washington Arch, in fabric, before he disappeared from the art world. He died in 2016 at 96. His work was rediscovered a year later by Jared Whipple, a Connecticut man who found hundreds of Mr. Hines’s paintings in a dumpster and who has since made it his mission to get Mr. Hines the attention he thinks the artist deserves.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Unpatched DNS bug affects millions of routers and IoT devices. “A vulnerability in the domain name system (DNS) component of a popular C standard library that is present in a wide range of IoT products may put millions of devices at DNS poisoning attack risk. A threat actor can use DNS poisoning or DNS spoofing to redirect the victim to a malicious website hosted at an IP address on a server controlled by the attacker instead of the legitimate location.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Fast Company: Are some fonts ageist? . “If you’re of a certain age, you might have noticed that you no longer read as quickly as you once did. This may be due to vision loss or cognitive changes. Or it might be due to something else: ageist fonts. A major new study has found that fonts matter in determining how quickly a person is able to read on screens. But they matter more if you’re over 35.”

Associated Press: Social Media Has Helped Forecasters Following 2011 Tornadoes. “In the 11 years since a devastating tornado outbreak struck Tuscaloosa, social media has evolved into a lifesaving tool during periods of severe weather, said Richard Scott, WVUA 23 News’ chief meteorologist.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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